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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

Hi, this might just be my first real problem with Debian! That's pretty cool as I was a Slackware user since 8.1 before switing to Etch earlier this year and it's been smooth rolling all the way until now. My issue is that I've been running fine on a 120gb IDA disk but recently bought a 500GB SATA drive and am trying to rebuild the system onto it. Windows went on fine, but the partitioning in Debian 4 isn't faring so well.

i always do the /mnt/special thing by the way, I just like to separate a drive from all OSes. when saying YES to proceed with the above partition plan it does its thing for a wee while but then gives the following error;

"File system is reporting the free space as 1345609 clusters, not 1345617 clusters.
Warning!

Ignore
Cancel"

I am currently having Crunchy Nut Clusters for my supper but I don't think its actually referring to them, hehe! but I'm not sure how to get around this issue. I don't think its anything due to my partitioning plan being rubbish as I had a similar one before, albeing with a smaller 'special' partition.

You're recommended to re-install Debian from scratch after installing Win-OS on that SATA disk. That way the kernel picks up the new SATA drive and loads the appropiate modules into the RAM disk. Just copying over your old system isn't going to work, 'cause that RAM disk has the IDE modules loaded...

The alternative could be that you use the IDE disk exclusively for Win-OS and the new SATA disk for Debian. Unless you have other uses for that old disk ofcourse

Re-use it in another machine. But if it's dying I guess the trashbin would be it's next stop, right?

So, you're re-installing Debian and the installer gives you those errors? That could mean the MBR of the disk might be containing nonsense. To solve that you could either use Win-OS or a Linux Live-CD (Knoppix would do nicely here )

In Win-OS, find yourself the DOS prompt and type: C:\ mbr -f (check if that command is correct, as my latest knowledge about that OS dates from Win 98SE )

In Knoppix, mount the disk and start cfdisk. Configure the required partitions and reboot into the Debian installer. It should pick up the existing partitions which you can allocate as you wish.

It has nothing to do with your problem, but is your swap partition not too small? Usually it has to be 2 times your amount of RAM, and I hardly can imagine that you run Linux with only 256 MB. If you do that anyway, you'll want to add more RAM sooner or later. Increasing your partition size is more difficult afterwards. And with a disk that big you really don't have to worry about a gig more or less.

Thanks for the replies, i shouldn't really have posted then gone to bed like that!

I only use 512MB swap as i have 2GB real ram and any rules that say you should have 1.5x-2x the physical ram should really be forgotten by now i think, i only think they should apply to low RAM systems where there is a far greater chance of actually needing any swap. i'm not wasting 4GB on swap space that'll never get used, so i like to sticjk it at 512MB. i can always watch the swap usage in KDE anyway with the system monitor thingy. oh, and i dont use hibernation.

rant over, right, using something else to create the partition sounds good, i had that idea too but was hoping it might be a quicker solution (me being lazy!); maybe it was a known issue with debian and large sata disks or something. i'll look into downloading a partitioner. that fdisk -f formats the MBR or something but i'm kinda foggy on that old stuff too and trust OSS things more now with getting stuff right than windows fdisk. give me cfdisk any day!

Thanks for all the help, I tried gParted CD but it crashed an ended up using Slackware 11 CD and fdisk to do the partitioning. Slackware is still as tough as old boots then! Got some weird error message about an invalid username during debian installation after that that i hadn't ever got before, maybe it doesn't like '_' underscores in usernames but I'm sure i used them before, oh well. also managed to get that huge 448GB partition writable by normal user and everything, aaaand... just finished copying off the old special 120GB disk. Woohoo!